


Red in the Ledger

by DrakePendragon



Series: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Citadel [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Natasha Romanov - POV, One Shot, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 20:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15614004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrakePendragon/pseuds/DrakePendragon
Summary: Natasha doesn't make many friends as a Spectre and even less in her life before. Losing one of the few means there's hell to pay.





	Red in the Ledger

He clicked his mandibles at me. That’s what I remember the most from that conversation. His painted mandibles clicking in amusement. He told me that my name was by far the oddest human name he had heard insofar. I responded with humor. Turian names are so similar to me.

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova, you are by far the best liar your species has ever created. I doubt I could ever trust you fully,” Nihlus told me. In good humor of course.

“You won’t be saying that the day I save your life,” I replied flippantly.

That conversation has only been three hours ago. Three hours ago I was sitting in the galley with one of the greatest operatives the galaxy had to offer. We were there, talking and a little bit of flirting. That memory had a lot of smiling. A perfectly honest memory where I was simply me and Nihlus was simply him. No pretending. No facades. As a Spectre, I was taught to cherish those moments because they are rarer than a truly honest person.

“Black Widow?” Commander Shepard said from behind me. I looked away from my old friend’s corpse and focused on the living. Always focus on the living because the dead are, in fact, dead.

“Nihlus is dead,” I stated without emotion.

“How?” he demanded.

“Heavy caliber round to the back of his head. Someone he trusted,” I replied.

“Who did it?” he asked.

“Don’t know yet. But they will suffer once I find out,” I said rather cruelly.

A woman, the same soldier from the video feed that Nihlus, Shepard, and I watched before this mission, pointed her rifle at the storage crates stacked outside the warehouse. Though she was wearing white and pink armor, everything looked a sickly red in this poisoned atmosphere.

“Sir! There is something back there,” she announced crisply and clearly.

“Shepard, incoming geth,” Kaidan told him.

“You got this?” Shepard asked me, nodding away from the disturbance.

“Yes,” I replied, uncharacteristically quiet and terse. I am much more known for my abuse of sarcasm that the dark, quiet, brooding type.

“Good. Kaidan, Williams, with me,” Shepard said.

“Understood,” they answered. The three of them headed into the burning remains of the warehouse. It was a terrible place for an ambush but only a horrible place to hide from the geth and the desiccated metal people running around. I rank terrible worse than horrible. That comes from writing field reports of really bad situations and having to qualify them in terms of gradually increasing awfulness.

I spotted five flashlight-heads in a tight grouping. Effective concentrated fire streams but also easy pickings. I drew my pistols, a pair of Spectre-grade weapons, and fired continuously for no less than three seconds, no more than fifteen seconds, and left five decommissioned synthetics behind. I shoved them back in their holsters before they were done venting. The geth were clearly not the culprit. They didn’t kill Nihlus. They could sneak up on a regular person because they do not breathe, they do not make idle noise. But I would have heard them and if I would, Nihlus would have. Regardless, the geth are appearing to solely use pulse rifles. Nothing remotely similar to heavy caliber fire.

It was hard, leaving his body behind. I summoned the wherewithal to crouch down and close his eyes one last time. It wasn’t a ritual that turians really understood, but it meant something to me. I haven’t had many friends in my life. Spent too much time killing people for hire rather than befriend them. Nihlus was one of the few. One of the very few. I am the third human Spectre, named only on the testimony of the second, Clint Barton. Both of us, because of our dubious pasts, placed under the guidance of Nick Fury, the first one. He found something he liked in us and in Nihlus. Take those three and you have all my friends in this galaxy. A bunch of killers recruited for the greater good. Now we’re one short and my faith wavers. My false cheer and wit fail me. I feel cold and vicious. The very reason I was named the Black Widow.

I walked back to the warehouse where the three Alliance Soldiers were. Our job was supposed to be simple but it turned into Budapest in no time at all. Nihlus and I were just supposed to evaluate Commander Shepard for Fury. The entire top brass of the Alliance wanted Shepard to be inducted. The Galaxy’s Top Spectre wanted to know why.

“I’m not saying anything, man! I know that I have a r-right not to incriminate myself!” A man said. He was stuttering. Intimidated, clearly. Normally I’d watch Shepard’s handling of this situation but I didn’t have time for it. Didn’t have the heart to care for niceties.

I triggered a quick-switch on my omni-tool and the man convulsed painfully as he clawed at his skull. A Widow Sting, as I playfully called them. A mix of a neural shock and an overload. The overload super-stimulates the brain in a way that forces a person to their feet after I turn off the neural shock. The three soldiers took a startled step back. I grabbed the dirty warehouse worker by the neck and lifted him up to my face.

“Who killed the turian?” I demanded. He stammered. I squeezed tighter. Pinching pressure on his arteries prevents any blood to flow to his brain. He’d be unconscious soon if he refuses to speak. However, in weaker, more trivial minds he might believe he’d be dead.

“Another turian! The dead one seemed to know him!” the man said quickly. I released my grip but slammed him against the shelving behind him. He whimpered in pain.

“Give me a name,” I threatened lowly.

“He called him Saren! That’s all I know! That and he headed to the spaceport,” he cried out. I dropped him since I had what I needed. I was prepared for bad news but this was terrible news. It strictly bypassed horrible.

“Catch up when you can,” I told Shepard and his team. This had gotten infinitely more personal. Saren Arterius. Nihlus’ mentor in the Spectre program. He never liked the idea of a human mentoring a turian and took Nihlus away from Fury. I don’t have proof to back up the warehouse worker’s claim. But if I can reach him at the spaceport I can beat it out of him. A simple truth, rare as a truly honest person, is that I hate Saren Arterius as much as he hates me.

I ran to the tram station and vaulted into a handspring off the metal platform onto the tramcar. I landed low to floor and below the geth basic sensors. There were geth all around me but I made short work of them with my pistols. The last one got two extra rounds in its flashlight head before I hit the accelerator and shot off down the tracks. I don’t know if Nihlus told Saren anything before he died, but if Saren knew I was here, he’d be afraid. His hatred of humans is only matched by his fear of what we can achieve. While he hates me more than any other human, the one he fears the most in this galaxy is Nick Fury. I intend to change that.

I jumped off the tram as it glided into the station. My armor, though very lightweight to allow for my physical combat strategy, was reinforced by a non-Newtonian fluid that ran throughout the plating braced by ample Foucault currents. Basically, I don’t feel the gunfire until the ninth or tenth shots. Another benefit is hard landings, like this one. My legs should shatter under the impact but the armor prevents that from happening.

All the geth were distracted by the tram full of metal corpses rather than my arrival. I triggered a command on my omni-tool and became completely invisible to both organic and synthetic senses. My most important tool as a Spectre most of the time. Most important technological tool. I find seduction to be the easiest way to get information most of the time. Also the easiest way to assassinate a target, too.

I snuck up the long metal ramp and onto the upper levels above the misplaced Prothean Beacon. It was him. Saren was there, communing with the beacon in some way. I set my omni-tool to record what I was seeing. Some kind of energy field surrounded him and lifted him a meter off the ground. Once he came down he instructed the geth to blow up the entire colony to cover his tracks. Brutal and true to form for the turian Spectre. That was enough for me. Enough proof. I shut down the camera. I vaulted the railing and landed with my knees on his shoulders. The Foucault currents rerouted from my fortifications and purged them through my gauntlets for a devastating energy delivery. It coupled with the breaking of my cloaking field to double or even triple the outbound energy. It was enough to collapse Saren on the spot but it did break my invisibility and opened me up to fire from all the geth around us. I was seeing red, though. I pummeled him with my supercharged fists until he managed to throw me backwards, looking very much worse for wear. I skidded on the metal floor and drew my pistols yet again. The six geth on the platform dropped under a hail of gun fire.

“You will never prove I was here, Romanov. Never! This colony is history!” Saren yelled at me. I shot him in the shoulder and knocked him against the railing. He tried to run at me but I flipped upwards to my feet and tackled him with my legs around his neck. We flipped around until we both crashed into the ground but I had him in an extraordinary painful leg-lock. I pulled out a synth-cable wire from my gauntlets and proceeded to viciously strangle him. He managed to rip the cord away from his neck so I discharged three full Widow Stings into him.

“You son of a bitch! He was your friend! Your protégé! He trusted you and you shot him in the back of the head!” I screamed at him. He tried to draw his pistol with his left hand. A pistol manufactured for heavy caliber rounds. The pistol that killed Nihlus. I torqued his shoulder with my hips and wrapped my around the limb. I twisted and pulled until his arm shattered, making him scream in pain and rage. The gun clattered to the ground but with one last flail Saren knocked the pistol off the edge. It felt from the platform thousands of feet to the colony below. It would shatter on impact. Inadmissible as evidence. I needed a new way to prove he was here at least to back up my filmed evidence. His omni-tool would do.

“It seems you are inferior to me again, Widow!” Saren said hatefully. He leaned his head back and spat in my face. I engaged a basic omni-blade and rammed it through his wounded shoulder. More screaming. With some force and brutal twisting of the broken limb, I cut it right off. He screamed and elbowed me in the face with his other arm. It did nothing to deter me. I grabbed my tactical knife from the holster on the back of my neck and rammed it into his cauterized stump. He elbowed me repeatedly in the face and I kept stabbing. Finally, one struck me in the neck hard enough to impede my airway. I involuntarily let him go.

I was gasping and coughing but had enough sense to draw a pistol as he tried to hobble/run away. My aim was shaky but the VI tactical scanner in my helmet and the other sharpshooting aids assisted. I shot him in the lung. I was aiming for the heart but they’re not in the same place on turians and I was shaking a bit. Saren still managed to get away with purple blood pouring out of a stump where his left arm should be.

I got to my feet and ripped off my helmet, letting me smell the acrid scent of a burning city. I wiped the stream of blood from my nose. The only injury he managed to land on me. Saren killed someone I promised I’d save. That blood is on my hands. I swore then and there that I would finish the job one day. Saren would die at my hands. He put red in my ledger. I mean to wipe it out.


End file.
